The chief of Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi, gets angry when ever any one conjectures that MIM has been directly or indirectly helping the BJP in winning the elections and in return blames the Congress and other secular parties for neglecting the Muslim question. He may be right to some extent in impugning the Congress and other parties, but did he ever really did an introspection or soul searching to find out the real reason?
He is a Muslim, his party MIM aspires to represent the Muslim aspiration, then why does he had to adopt extreme mechanism to win over the Muslims. The Muslims should have in a normal manner without much efforts by him should have rallied behind him. It has not been happening. He had to arouse the Muslim passion to carve out a place amongst the Muslims.
Since there is a leadership vacuum in the Muslim community he has been getting a good response and his party spreading across the country. It is encouraging to note that he is emerging as the symbol of Muslim aspiration. But is he sure that the nature and character of politics and the ideology he claims to preach would be able to hold the Muslim support for long? He has already acquired the status of a national leader of the Muslim community. Apart from Hyderabad, his electoral base has now spread to Maharashtra and Bihar, where the AIMIM has won both assembly and municipal seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, AIMIM won a seat in Maharashtra, apart from Hyderabad.
He speaks of secularism, claims to be a secular. But the fact cannot be denied that he has been pushing his own religo-politics. His blaming the Congress and other opposition parties not only weakens these parties but also creates revulsion in the heart and minds of the common Muslim against the concept and ideology of secularism. He ought to realise that his success in carving out a Muslim constituency will bleed the secular forces and secularism.
His MIM may acquire a pan India character, may have its elected representatives in all the state assembly of the country, but he cannot deny that this will add strength to RSS and its communal politics and would target Muslims as the permanent enemy. Even an ordinary anti RSS and secular Hindu will turn sceptical of the Muslim political order. His kind of politics will isolate the Muslims even from the liberal and secular Hindus who so far have seen Muslims as their partners in fight against communalism. This is the most dangerous spectre that is staring at India. This situation is fraught with the danger of RSS and BJP winning over the centrist and liberal Hindus.
Owaisi is educated and trained as a barrister, with a deep conviction that democracy is a necessary political system for Muslim well-being in India. Obviously one expects that he should be more objective. No doubt initially he was with the UPA, but in 2012 he broke away from the UPA. It was after this he became a Muslim face. During the Bihar elections people heard him saying that he tried to forge alliance with some parties, but they did not accept him. This is a serious allegation. But t the same time it raises the question why the opposition parties did not have alliance with him that too precisely at a time, when the opposition is desperate to have all the forces together to defeat the BJP.
I am none to suggest that with whom he should ally. Again it is not my business to suggest what should be his personal and political stand and stance towards the Congress and other opposition groups and parties. But as a politician aspiring to serve the Muslims he ought to look at the political system and the polity with an objective approach. He must do some introspection why the RSS and BJP leaders describe him as the modern Jinna. Obviously this helps them promote their cause. One thing is sure that if the Muslims move away from the Congress, the BJP’s winning possibilities in every state will increase. Even left and regional parties like the Samajwadi Party and the RJD will lose.
Owaisi ought to weigh the consequences of emotions and the real politick. Undeniably the Muslims are unhappy with secularism, but it is also a fact that renouncing secularism will harm them more. Owaisi was sure to perform a spectacular performance in the recently held Hyderabad municipal election. But his aggressive posture only helped the BJP. The Hindus rallied behind the BJP and even those with the TRP shifted their loyalty to the BJP. MIM maintained its old number, but BJP gained; from 3 to 48 seats.
Owaisi need to reinvent his politics. It cannot be denied that Muslims have been neglected by the rulers. But it is also a bare fact that Muslim nobility and the Ulemas have never tried to listen their voice and plan for their growth and empowerment. It is a known fact that education is the most effective instrument for the empowerment. But no effort was made to reach the modern education to the boys and girls.
The Muslim representation from the first (1952) to fourteenth (2004) Lok Sabha was 5.3 per cent which is clearly very low vis-à-vis their population proportion of 12 per cent during this period. The Muslims should have been encouraged to participate effectively in the electoral process. Significantly like the upper caste Hindus, the upper caste Muslims too had an effective presence in the politics. The Ashrafs with a 2.1 per cent share in the national population had a representation of 4.5 per cent from the first to the fourteenth Lok Sabha.
On the other hand, the Pasmanda Muslims with a population share of 11.4 per cent merely had a 0.8 per cent representation. The data suggests that the Ashrafs sections were doubly represented. The broad trend of Pasmanda political exclusion continued in the 17th Lok Sabha—out of 25 Muslim MPs, 18 were Ashrafs while 7 were Pasmanda. The Indian Muslim society is hierarchical and internally divided into about 700 ranked caste (biradari) groups. The Syeds among Muslims are the most revered caste and hold a status akin to that of Brahmins in the Hindu community.
Owaisi must not nurse the view that he can fight out BJP alone. The determination of the BJP and RSS to defeat Mamata Banerjee in Bengal makes it explicit that they are working on a major design. They know that once they have a BJP government in Bengal, then it would be not a major task to win the entire India. The anti-BJP forces must not nurse any illusion that they can defeat the saffron force independently. They must also have an insight into the functioning of the RSS-BJP; how they are trying to subvert the constitutional functioning and transform India into a Hindu Rashtra.
Owaisi reiterates that the condition of Muslims is worse than Dalits which is factually not correct. The societal structure has not allowed the proper growth of the liberal Muslim middle class. It is good that during the last 20 years the process has started. True enough this is the major reason for the Hindutva forces turning hostile to the Muslims. An empowered Muslim is basically secular in character and a potential challenge to communal politics.
Since Owaisi is highly educated and knows the language of constitutional democracy he must evolve a new political narrative. Though he claims to be critical of the BJP’s agenda, ironically his entire effort has been to expose the “hypocrisy” of the “secular” parties, especially the Congress. He argues that these parties have done nothing to improve the socio-economic status of the Muslims or empower them politically during the decades they were in power. But at the same time Owaisi has to reply what the Muslim religious and political leaders have done for their empowerment. His thrust to expand the reach of AIMIM across the country as a Muslim party is not the only panacea. Instead he ought to spell out how it could be accomplished. He has to seriously look into the possible counterproductive implications. Owaisi must use the ethos of the Indian-Muslim nationalism as a weapon against the BJP-RSS’s attempt to decry and denigrate Muslims. (IPA Service)